The table between the government and unions on the budget law chaired by the Prime Minister is underway at Palazzo Chigi Giorgia Meloni. Present for the government are the Deputy Prime Minister Antonio Tajani, the Minister of Economy and Finance Giancarlo Giorgetti, the Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso, the Minister of Labor and Social Policies Marina Calderone, the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara, the Minister of Health Orazio Schillaci, the Minister for Public Administration Paolo Zangrillo and the secretary to the Prime Minister Alfredo Mantovano. For the trade unions, representatives of Cgil, Cisl, Uil, Ugl, Usb, Cida, Cisal, Confedir, Confentità, Confsal, Ciu and Cse are present.
Before the start of the meeting between the government and the unions, according to what we learn from union sources, the secretaries of CGIL and UIL, Maurizio Landini e Pierpaolo Bombardieri they gave a calculator and a book to Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The Prime Minister, having received the gifts, would have asked a Luigi Sbarra: “Didn’t you bring me anything?”. The CISL leader responded: “We didn’t bring any gadgets. We will limit ourselves to giving you our proposals to improve the development policy of this country.”
The book given to Meloni by Landini is ‘The Man in Revolt’ by Albert Camus, in reference to the recent controversy over his call for a ‘social revolt’. “If they are afraid of words it is good that they understand the theme, and that is that faced with a level of injustice and inequalities like the one that is being created, I believe that there is a need for people to no longer accept, to no longer turn around on the other hand”, Landini had explained to reporters before the start of the meeting, “there is a real need for a radical change that starts from political action but also from personal action: it is the people who must get together , also in terms of solidarity, to fight this level of injustice, because it cannot be that those who work are poor and it cannot be that our young people have to go abroad to fulfill themselves, when we are an aging country”, added Landini.
Is it possible to call off the strike?
“We declared the strike because the maneuver was delivered to Parliament, I would like to remind you that we also held hearings in the Chambers, so we went and were called by the Chambers to give an opinion. We couldn’t go to the Chambers saying we must first meet the Government. The margins depend on how much money and how many choices are already closed in the decisions taken”, Bombardieri said for his part to those who asked him if there were margins to review the strike proclaimed together with CGIL for November 29th.
“If the Government shows up saying that there are only 120 million margins – he added – it will be a little complicated to find an agreement. If the Government shows up and says that there are margins, for example, to finance the tax relief on increases contractual agreements, to intervene on safety, to give more money on healthcare, to modify the blockade and penalties on pensions, on women’s options and on everything else, we are ready to discuss”, continued Bombardieri, “so it essentially depends on them. They knew our requests before making the move, they are not new. If they are willing to discuss and provide resources, on the other hand they asked us to wait from 9 to 10 because Giorgetti was supposed to arrive. Maybe he brings fresh money and so maybe the meeting will be useful.
“It is wrong to set the country’s climate on fire or throw fuel on the fire of social malaise. We must build the conditions so that, through dialogue and discussion, we face the great challenges we face. There is a need to find ourselves in an industrious sobriety, how much further away from the screams that the media offers us every day, Sbarra had declared in an interview that appeared today in ‘Il Tempò.
“As regards the general strike – he added – the danger is to debase this important instrument, the most radical at the union’s disposal, making it an inconclusive ritual. Thinking of acting as a driving force for the political opposition damages both union representation, which in fact no longer plays an incisive role at the tables, and that of the subjects we would like to push”.
Meloni: “Concentrate resources on fundamental priorities”
“The Government has decided to summon the trade unions to Palazzo Chigi for a discussion on the main measures of the budget law. The budget maneuver is in continuity with the choices that the Government made with the two previous financial laws. We have concentrated the resources on some fundamental priorities, with a medium and long-term vision, keeping accounts in order and focusing on a growth perspective for the Italian system, despite the far from easy international context in which we operate”, said Meloni in his speech introductory, “I consider it a change of pace compared to the approach that we have seen too many times in the past, when it was preferred to adopt measures more useful for gathering immediate consensus than for laying the foundations for lasting growth, passing on the cost of those measures on who would come next.”
The prime minister’s most obvious reference is to the Superbonus. “We collect the serious legacy of debts that weigh like a boulder on the public accounts”, continued Meloni, “I will cite two numbers to make it clear what I am talking about: 30 and 38. Thirty billion is the overall value of this budget maneuver; thirty-eight these are the billions that, in 2025 alone, the Superbonus launched by the Conte 2 Government will cost the public purse to renovate less than 4% of Italian residential properties, mainly second and third homes, i.e. money from which mainly those who were better off benefited great operation of regressive income redistribution in the history of Italy. With the same resources, any provision of this budget law could have been more than doubled. This applies to healthcare, public contracts, schools and increases wages and so on.”
“Record figure for the National Health Fund”
The Prime Minister then claims the increase in health spending: “After the confusion I caused at Porta a Porta, I am happy that Bombardieri brought me a calculator, so he can also make this quick calculation. When this government took office, in 2022, the National Health Fund was 126 billion. In 2025 it will reach the record figure of 136.5 billion. This means that, in two years, the Health Fund will increase by 10.5 billion euros again and will reach 140.6 billion. Health spending does not only increase in absolute terms, but also as per capita spending, even taking inflation into account.
“Support for medium-low incomes, support for work, incentives for families with children, the reduction of the tax burden, the increase in resources in healthcare and the renewal of public employee contracts”, are the priorities indicated by Meloni. “We have decided to confirm and strengthen the main measures introduced in previous years, in particular relating to the world of work and family support, making some of them structural, as was requested above all by the trade unions”, he added, “I am referring, in in particular, to cutting the tax wedge”.